Here are a few of the warning signs that you may be a Libertarian:
Video of the Day: Warning Signs that you might be a Libertarian
Published: November 4, 2011
Reason Archive
Reason: Revolution on the Nile: Rebellious Cops, Lethal Aid, and Off Switch Envy
Published: January 29, 2011
(By Jesse Walker, Originally posted at Reason’s Hit & Run.)
The most hopeful news to come out of Egypt today are the reports of officers fraternizing with protesters, removing their uniforms, refusing to fire their weapons. That’s when a popular revolt succeeds: when the storm troopers won’t follow orders. The question is how widespread that is — how many cops and soldiers will break ranks and how many will continue to crack down. One odd wrinkle in Egypt is that the protesters think the army is more likely than the police to come over to their side.
The Obama administration says it will “review” U.S. aid to Egypt. Good — the one constructive thing Washington could do right now is to cut off its support for the Mubarak regime. Egypt is presently the fourth biggest recipient of American foreign aid, after Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel.
Meanwhile, Sean Bonner reminds readers that Joe Lieberman wants Washington to have an Internet off switch like Hosni Mubarak’s.
Egypt is center stage today, but while you’re watching events there don’t neglect the rebellions bubbling in Jordan, Yemen, and Algeria. The Middle East may be in a transnational revolutionary moment.
ReasonTV: Balanced Budget, Explained With Pork
Published: December 15, 2010
It seems the public perception is that balancing the budget would be impossible, that it would require a Herculean amount of political courage to cut out all the fat necessary to end deficit spending.
Alas. Reason.tv‘s Nick Gillespie trims the fat to show just how absolutely huuuuuuuge the cuts would have to be:
No reason not to cut to at least the balancing point. Heck, maybe even get into that deficit. Congress Critter, you can even leave your leather jacket on.
Reason.tv presents Great Moments in Unintended Consequences!
Published: December 13, 2010
From ReasonTV:
All actions have unanticipated side effects, but government acting through regulation or legislation is particularly adept at creating disastrous unintended consequences. Great Moments in Unintended Consequences takes a look at three instances of epic government facepalm: Osborne Reef, Corn Ethanol Subsidies, and a particular clause in ObamaCare that is already doing more harm than good.
Reason: Does Preserving the Bush Tax Rates Doom Us to Massive Deficits? Nope!
Published: December 7, 2010
Read the entire post at Reason.com.
By Nick Gillespie
So, does keeping the Bush tax rates mean that the government, which has hiked federal outlays 60 percent in constant 2010 dollars since Bill Clinton left office, will be starved for money? Not hardly.
In fact, as Veronique de Rugy and I laid out yesterday, it would be quite easy to balance the budget in 2020 if the government would start early with small, systematic cuts designed to get government outlays about equal to the historic average of government revenue. Since 1950, the feds have brought in average revenue equal to about 18 percent of GDP. In its more-realistic “alternative scenario” budget projections, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2020, revenues will equal about 19 percent of GDP, near the historic average. The CBO’s alternative scenario is based on keeping the Bush tax rates through 2020 and doing various types of AMT patches that reduce the number of people paying the AMT. In other words, CBO’s revenue scenario keeps things the way they’ve been for the past decade or so.
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In Defense of Libertarianism An open letter to left-liberals
Published: May 29, 2010
By: Terry Michael
To my left-liberal Democrat friends:
As you engage in intellectual dishonesty using Rand Paul’s silly comments on the 1964 Civil Rights Act to misrepresent libertarianism, perhaps you might want to consider a little history of the political philosophy of the founder of our party, Thomas Jefferson, the original libertarian. Let me help you escape your ignorance about libertarianism without a capitalL, a political philosophy far from conservatism.
As a child of the 1960s, I was one of you. I wore a “Madly for Adlai” button, delivered Kennedy brochures on my newspaper route, and defended Medicare in speech class. Growing up in the Bible Belt, I was the only kid in town to subscribe to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a near-communist rag according to neighbors who read the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, for which a young Pat Buchanan was writing editorials.
Reason Magazine Comes To The Defense of the Tea Party Movement
Published: April 27, 2010
Finally! Someone who actually understands statistical analysis comes to the defense of the Tea Party Movement to expose some of the more vicious myths about our fellow Americans.
Ever since the “Tea Parties” gained national attention, the debate has raged on whether they are a grass-roots protest movement in the proud tradition of American dissent, or a hysterical mob driven by fear, intolerance, and selfishness. Recently, two much-discussed surveys—aCBS/New York Times poll and a multi-state University of Washington poll—have been bandied about as proof that the leftist caricatures of the Tea Partiers as mean-spirited rich white bigots are accurate. Yet a look at the data suggests that this interpretation is highly skewed by political bias.
